Arcadia Contemporary Soho

OCTOBER 9, 2014

As a moderately busy illustrator with a series of deadlines linked together with more deadlines, I can sometimes produce work that is more mirror than memoir. I keep a sketchbook to help my mind reach and sometimes images float to the top and need to be painted. Following what had been a stressful time, images in the sketchbook were rich and released some of that tension. In the spring, a random call from a gallery asking for work for an exhibition was quite unexpected. In our discussions and looking over my work, they wondered if I might use fire and still life in the same pieces? It took months to figure it out, but once I did, the pieces came quickly.

When I do a personal piece it’s almost always driven purely by aesthetics; I want to paint water, or an elephant or a door. I trust those impulses and it’s only a bit later that I arrive at why. With this series, it was initially random things of a certain vintage in flame and it wasn’t until the 4th painting, a hammer, where I figured out what this series meant.
It’s a series about being stuck, with no one to talk to, no one who can see you, the loss of time and finally not being able to work. This series could only come out in a place of deep happiness and contentment, as the distance makes it possible.
The exhibition is filled with brilliant artists, some who are friends, and I encourage anyone who can, to come and see the paintings and perhaps acquire my pieces.
Cheers.

SMALL WORKS
A Group Exhibition of New Works
October 16th- October 31st, 2014